"This intermediate Latin reader is designed to strengthen students' reading skills through an accessible and entertaining text. ... The text included in this reader is Jacobus de Voragine's abridged Latin version of the legend of Saints Barlaam and Josaphat. The Latin of Jacobus, a 13th-century compiler, offers excellent opportunities for the systematic learning of the peculiarities of Late and Medieval Latin."--Provided by publisher.

In the ten books of his Periegesis, or "Description of Greece," the ancient Greek traveler Pausanias (second century CE) describes the central regions of ancient Greece, giving his readers a wealth of information about religious rites, indigenous myths, historical events, sculptural and artistic works, temples, local customs, and much more. In A Student Commentary on Pausanias Book 2, Patrick Paul Hogan provides intermediate-level students of Classical Greek the necessary linguistic, historical, mythographical, archaeological, and geographical information to read and comprehend Book 2 of Pausanias' Periegesis. Book 2 of Pausanias' work covers several major cities of the northeast Peloponnesus, principally Corinth but also Argos, Epidaurus, and Troezen, as well as the prominent island of Aegina. In A Student Commentary on Pausanias Book 1, Hogan reintroduced students to Pausanias after nearly a century. In this new volume he does not focus exclusively on the topography and material remains of the areas he describes: his line-by-line commentary on Pausanias' text devotes equal attention to explicating the vocabulary and syntax of the Greek and putting into context the myriad historical and mythological references found throughout the text, for example, the life of the Sicyonian politician Aratus and the myth of Hyrnetho, daughter of Temenus. A Student Commentary on Pausanias Book 2 includes the full text of Book 2 in Classical Greek together with Hogan's commentary. The book is accessible to intermediate-level students, whether undergraduates or graduate students, who are ready to read extended passages of Classical Greek prose, and will also be of interest to scholars of the topography, history, and mythology of ancient Greece, specifically the Argolid.

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This study brings recent scholarly debates on oral cultures and literate societies to bear on the earliest recorded literature in German (800-1300). It considers the criteria for assessing what works were destined for listeners, what examples anticipated readers, and how for both modes of reception could apply to one work, exploring the possible interplay between them. The opening chapters review previous scholarship and the introduction of writing into preliterate Germany. The core of the book presents lexical and non-lexical evidence for the different modes of reception, taken from the whole spectrum of genres, from dance songs to liturgy, from drama and heroic literature to the court narrative and lyric poetry. The social contexts of reception and the physical process of reading books are also considered. Two concluding chapters explore the literary and historical implications of the slow interpenetration of orality and literacy. There is a comprehensive bibliographical index of primary sources.

Maríu saga, the Old Norse-Icelandic life of the Virgin Mary, survives in nineteen manuscripts. While the 1871 edition of the saga provides two versions based on multiple manuscripts and prints significant variants in the notes, it does not preserve the literary and social contexts of those manuscripts. In the extant manuscripts Maríu saga rarely exists in the codex by itself. This study restores the saga to its manuscript contexts in order to better understand the meaning of the text within its manuscript matrix, why it was copied in the specific manuscripts it was, and how it was read and used by the different communities that preserved the manuscripts.

The Encyclopedia of Italian Literary Studies is a two-volume reference book containing some 600 entries on all aspects of Italian literary culture. It includes analytical essays on authors and works, from the most important figures of Italian literature to little known authors and works that are influential to the field. The Encyclopedia is distinguished by substantial articles on critics, themes, genres, schools, historical surveys, and other topics related to the overall subject of Italian literary studies. The Encyclopedia also includes writers and subjects of contemporary interest, such as those relating to journalism, film, media, children's literature, food and vernacular literatures. Entries consist of an essay on the topic and a bibliographic portion listing works for further reading, and, in the case of entries on individuals, a brief biographical paragraph and list of works by the person. It will be useful to people without specialized knowledge of Italian literature as well as to scholars.

The fascinating account of how the story of the Buddha was transformed into the legend of a Christian saint. The story of Saint Josaphat, a prince who gave up his wealth and kingdom to follow Jesus, was one of the most popular Christian tales of the Middle Ages, translated into a dozen languages, and cited by Shakespeare in The Merchant of Venice. Yet Josaphat is only remembered today because of the similarities of his life to that of the Buddha. In Search of the Christian Buddha is set against the backdrop of the trade along the Silk Road, the Christian settlement of Palestine, the spread of Islam, and the Crusades. It traces the path of the Buddha’s tale from India and shows how it evolved, adopting details from each culture during its sojourn. These early instances of globalization allowed not only goods but also knowledge to flow between different cultures and around much of the world. Eminent scholars Donald S. Lopez Jr. and Peggy McCracken reveal how religions born thousands of miles apart shared ideas throughout the centuries. They uncover surprising convergences and divergences between these faiths on subjects including the meaning of death, the problem of desire, and their view of women. Demonstrating the incredible power of this tale, they ask not how stories circulate among religions but how religions circulate among stories.